Desaparecidos – The Disappeared Of Argentina Come Back

In today’s Sunday Globe, in the arts and movies section, is the haunting story of Juan Mandelbaum, a documentary filmmaker in Brookline, Massachusetts, and his college girlfriend, Patricia Dixon. She was taken by the forces of Argentinian fascism and conservatism from her apartment on September 5, 1977 and disappeared from life.

The hard copy of the Globe contains a picture of Ms. Dixon. It’s black and white, showing a slender, pretty, young woman sitting cross-legged on the grass. She’s wearing jeans, a white, short-sleeved blouse, holding a cigarette in her right hand, wearing a black watchband on her left wrist. She’s smiling, looking into the camera. Her hair is dark and thick, falling down to her shoulders, parted on the left. She’s very pretty, very alive.

For the legions who say ‘it can’t happen here’, you haven’t been paying attention to the regime of the Republicans and George W. Bush. They don’t call it ‘disappearing’. They call it ‘extraordinary rendition’. The sane among us call it kidnapping and torture and murder. It’s a sad commentary on the condition of the government of the United States that there is nothing extraordinary about these activities and that there is very little, if anything, standing in the way of the United States government disappearing Americans. Sadder still is the number of Americans, found in great numbers at McCain and Palin political rallies, who would welcome such actions by the government.